The college interview generates more anxiety per minute of actual admissions weight than almost any other part of the process. The real picture is more specific and less alarming than the anxiety suggests: interviews carry genuinely limited formal weight at most schools, several major universities have eliminated them entirely in recent years, and not being offered one is almost never a signal about your application.
Evaluative vs. informational -- know which kind you're walking into
Interviews split into two genuinely different categories, and it's worth confirming which one you're being offered before you over- or under-prepare. An evaluative interview becomes part of your file -- the interviewer, often a local alumnus rather than an admissions staffer, submits a report that gets read alongside your application. An informational interview exists mainly to help you learn about the school and ask questions, with little to no bearing on the actual decision. Many schools blend the two in practice: conversational in tone, but still resulting in a report that lands in your file to some degree -- which is why the safest default is treating any interview you're offered as if it counts, even at a school that frames it as informational.
The trend: several major schools have scaled back or eliminated interviews entirely
This isn't a stable, unchanging part of the process -- it's been shrinking at exactly the schools that get the most applicant volume. Brown eliminated alumni interviews after the pandemic. Penn shifted to non-evaluative "alumni conversations" instead of a formal evaluative interview. Washington University in St. Louis ended alumni interviewing recently. University of Chicago, Cornell, and Northwestern have also eliminated interviews. The common driver is scale: rising application volume (the same application inflation trend covered in our piece on how many colleges to apply to) makes it genuinely difficult to recruit enough alumni volunteers to interview every applicant fairly, so several schools have simply stopped trying rather than offer an inconsistent, effectively random subset of applicants an advantage. Small liberal arts colleges are the clear exception -- they're far more likely to still offer, and meaningfully weigh, an interview than large research universities are. Some schools have replaced the live interview with a short recorded video response instead (commonly 60 seconds to two minutes) -- a different but related shift toward formats that scale better than one-on-one conversations, echoing the same pressure covered in our piece on colleges dropping supplemental essays.
How much weight it actually carries, in real numbers
NACAC's own survey of member colleges, from the Fall 2023 admission cycle, is the clearest data available on this, and it's blunt: only 4.3% of colleges rated the interview a factor of "considerable importance" in admission decisions, 8.6% called it "moderately important," 32.4% said "limited importance," and 54.6% -- more than half of all surveyed colleges -- said the interview carries no importance at all. For comparison, the same survey had 76.8% of colleges rating high school grades as "considerable importance," and 18.9% rating essays that highly. The interview sits near the bottom of every factor NACAC tracks, well below grades, curriculum rigor, test scores, essays, and recommendation letters.
Not being offered one isn't a red flag
Given how many schools can't logistically offer an interview to every applicant, not receiving one -- or not being able to schedule one before it fills up -- reflects supply and regional alumni availability far more often than anything about your specific application. Don't read the absence of an interview invitation as a signal your file is weak; at most schools where this happens, it isn't evaluated as one at all.
If you do get one, how to actually prepare
Because the actual admissions weight is small at most schools, the highest-value preparation isn't memorizing rehearsed answers -- it's showing up genuinely informed about the specific school, the same substance that makes a strong "why us" essay actually work: know a couple of specific programs, professors, or opportunities you'd actually use, not just the school's general reputation. Bring real questions of your own; a good interview is a two-way conversation, not an interrogation you're passively enduring. A mediocre, forgettable interview rarely damages an otherwise strong application given how little formal weight it carries -- but in a small local applicant pool, a genuinely bad one (dismissive, unprepared, clearly uninterested) is memorable in a way that can work against you, so treat basic preparation as a floor to clear, not a place to try to manufacture a decisive advantage.
What this means for you
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Confirm whether your interview is evaluative or informational, but prepare for it seriously either way -- many "informational" interviews still generate a report that reaches your file.
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Don't panic if a school you're applying to doesn't offer interviews at all, or if you can't get one scheduled. Several major schools have eliminated the format entirely, and NACAC's own data shows it carries no weight at more than half of colleges surveyed.
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Prepare substance, not a script. Specific, genuine knowledge about the school matters more than a rehearsed answer to "why do you want to attend here" -- generic answers are exactly what a bored alumni interviewer has heard a hundred times already.
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Treat the interview as a floor to clear, not your best opportunity to stand out. With interviews rated "considerable importance" by only 4.3% of colleges, your essays, grades, and activities are doing far more work in most decisions.
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This is one step in the larger process, not a standalone task -- see the complete step-by-step guide to applying to college for how it fits with everything else, and where you are in the sequence.